“Crackpipe” tweet from parody Twitter account set off police raid

The police raid of a small-town Illinois residence in search of the prankster parodying the local mayor was set in motion after the mayor told police he was upset over being falsely portrayed as a drug abuser, according to court documents.

The Peoria raid last week resulted in marijuana drug-possession charges against one man. But the operator of the @peoriamayor handle has not been charged.

According to a search warrant application, Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis was concerned that the tweets in the account impersonating him implied that the mayor "utilizes illegal drugs, associates with prostitutes, and utilized offensive inappropriate language."

One tweet the mayor complained to the authorities about read: "... Who stole my crackpipe?"

The account has been suspended. Tweets from the account are not available in the Internet Archives.

Another tweet mentioned in an application for the search warrant said, "I'm up all night woke up with pussy on my breath and bloodshot eyes and we got people talking bout live tweeting? Let me do my job u do urs." Still another tweet said, "If you don't like Peoria and u wanna sit here and bitch about den leave."

A picture on the account, according to the warrant, was of a "hand holding a razor blade which was separating a white powdery substance."

Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard said last week the department was investigating misdemeanor charges of impersonating a public official, which carries a maximum one-year jail term and $2,500 fine. Yet some suggested the whole ordeal could have been avoided had the First Amendment prevailed.

The authorities obtained the location of the house to raid after Twitter complied with a warrant and supplied account information, as did Comcast with an IP address.

Jacob Elliot, whose name was on the Comcast account, faces felony marijuana charges for allegedly possessing 30 to 500 grams of marijuana and remains free pending a hearing next month. He has been suspended from his work of 14 years, too, after several armed officers wearing bulletproof vests stormed his residence.

"I couldn’t believe this much force was being used for a fake Twitter account—it blew my mind," Elliott told the JournalStar. "It was extremely frightening. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life."

Roommate Jon Daniel, one of five people brought in for questioning, allegedly created the parody account on March 9, local media reported. No charges against him have been levied.

"The impersonations of Obama on Saturday Night Live, Bill Clinton on Conan, those are legal. This was the same thing: a joke," he said, according to the JournalStar.

Seized during the raid were several computers and mobile phones.

Promoted Comments

If only there was some way that one could prove your identity to twitter and have a "verified" account or something, so people know it's actually the person they're claiming to be instead of literally anyone else on the planet who can register on twitter. Then this whole situation could have been avoided, since anyone could see it wasn't a verified account, and thus likely fake.

You can't just ask for a verified account. You only get verified if Twitter thinks you're important enough.

When they hand them out to people with Alf avatars how hard can it be?

21023 posts | registered Jun 8, 2001

David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets